Garrod had completely passed out of their minds. They found him lying in the grass a little to one side. He had fainted. It provided a distraction to their shaken nerves, and gradually a measure of calmness returned to them all. Kate Worsley and Vassall worked over Garrod. Jack, who felt a strong repugnance to touching him, rode back for water to the last stream they had crossed.
When Garrod returned to consciousness the shock to his confused faculties of seeing Jack standing in front of him, and his mingled remorse and relief, were all very painful to see. He babbled explanations, apologies, self-accusations; none of them could make out what it all amounted to.
"Don't," said Jack turning away. "I don't blame you. I should have made everybody dismount at once. It was my own fault."
At the time he honestly believed it.
It was a very much sobered procession that wound back to camp. As they climbed the side of one of the steep gullies, leading their horses, Jack and Linda found themselves together.
"I tell you, it gives you a queer start to fall through space," said Jack with a grim smile. "I never lived so fast in my life. Down below I saw every separate stone that was waiting to smash me. And in that one second before I grabbed the tree I remembered everything that had happened to me since I was a baby."
"Don't talk about it," she murmured, turning away her head. At the same time a little spring of gladness welled in her breast, for it was the first time that he had ever dropped his guard with her.
"Do you care?" he said, off-hand. "I thought you were the kind that didn't."
She flashed a look at him. "Would you have me the same to everybody?" she said.
He lifted her on her horse in the way that had suggested itself to him as most natural. It was not according to the fashionable conventions of riding, but Linda liked it. Her hand fell on his round, hard shoulder under the flannel shirt, and she bore upon it heavier than she need. They rode on with beating hearts, avoiding each other's eyes.